A quiver is a type of carrying case used by an archer to hold a supply of arrows therein. As such, it is important that the archer be able to quickly and easily insert arrows into the quiver, and more importantly, to quickly and easily remove the arrows, as needed, such as when encountering a quarry.
Most conventional quivers have an elongate stand with a protective arrowhead holding sheath on one end and a notched relatively hard plastic bar to hold the shaft of the arrows near the fletched end thereof. Usually the sheath is filled with some type of impregnable foam-like product and the arrows are held at one end by inserting the arrowhead in the foam and then vertically displacing the arrow shaft within a notch in the bar to hold the other end of the arrow.
Such quivers have several inherent problems. For example, arrows cannot be removed quickly because two motions are required by the user, that is, first the back of the arrow must be vertically lifted and then the arrow horizontally shifted to release the arrowhead from the foam-like insert in the sheath. Such movement not only takes time, which might be precious to the hunter when in sight of his quarry, but also, repeated insertions and removals of the arrowhead from the foam-like insert in the sheath deteriorates the insert requiring frequent replacement thereof. In addition, the snapping of the arrow out of the notches in the bar as well as the potential contact of the arrowhead with the sheath can cause a noise which would be detected by the quarry. Finally, the prior art quivers are limited in the number of arrows which can be carried by the hunter and if the hunter is one who perceives the need to carry a large number of arrows, he will be required to carry several quivers.
It is also known in the art to provide quivers with rotatable grips or tabs for holding an arrow in the quiver. By being rotatable, it is intended that the arrow be easily pulled from the grips in one motion. However, the quivers known to date have not proven to provide the quietness required by a hunter upon removal of the arrow. Furthermore, these quivers have been found to be difficult to load and unload with an arrow, that is, the rotatable nature of the arrow grips makes it difficult to insert an arrow into the quiver, because the grips tend to merely freely rotate on their axles rather than engage the arrow. This is even more of a problem when the quiver includes two laterally spaced and opposing grips for holding an arrow.
At least one quiver has been configured such that a plurality of grips are arranged in a staggered and back-to-back manner such that two sets of arrows are held in two parallel planes. To help prevent untoward rotation during loading and unloading of an arrow, each grip is configured such that a leading edge engages the grip to which it is backed against. This arrangement has proven unsatisfactory in that the rubber grips often do not have sufficient compression resistance to eliminate the over-rotation problem. Furthermore, the leading edges of the grips are worn away with repeated use, making the engagement with the other grips less positive and less effective.
Finally, it is often desirable that a quiver be mounted to a bow and devices which accomplish that result are known in the art. However, a disadvantage with the quiver mounts heretofore known is that the positioning of the arrows with respect to the bow is dependent upon the mounting bracket and the manner in which it attaches to the bow, and not the convenience of the archer.